Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)

 

You see I don't believe that interesting cinema means only "good" movies. I have seen very interesting crap films and totally dead good movies. Taste is a thing that answers to complete subjectivity and that is the number one rule if you want to write about art. There ain't such thing as good taste. There ain't a movie that is better than the other, period. What Boogie Nights is trying to convince us is that the people who made porn in this planet and especially in USA during the golden age of porn were the biggest, most problematic, morons and idiots. Well I have only one thing to say about Boogie Nights and that is that the movie has some fucking nerve. And an ego that is so huge that you barely can see it touching the sky. Attacking in that cowardly way the people of porn is like believing that you are, in a way, far better than they were. Well guess what, you aren't!

Having that snobbish reaction towards these people and their movies is like actually believing that you are the guy who can judge them in that harsh and unforgiving way. Who has the right to judge someone in that way? No one. Really and actually having that boost of ego at your side and making that film as a straightforward ridiculing comment on the porn industry is for me an act of pure shame. It's not the fact that I watch old porn movies that makes me say that, is more the fact that this kind of judgmental attitude never appealed to me as a way of communicating something in this world of ours. I feel that Boogie Nights and together Paul Thomas Anderson who wrote it and directed it, were thinking that they are better than all the others, the dirty ones, who watch porn movies. What a delusion is that, I might add. 

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson, 2023)

 

Whenever I try to write about Wes' films I lose my words and feel like a fucking idiot. Wes' films are so great that my humble English cannot describe. Because the image is poetic in a most authentic and idiosyncratic way, that whatever you write would be crap. I saw Asteroid City and once more Wes didn't disappoint not even for one minute of the film. His skill in building intriguing, multi-dimensional characters is absolutely perfected and in Asteroid City. You think that you are going to touch those characters. And then is the actual visual of the film where you simply have nothing to add. I believe that in a way all Wes' movies are science fiction films if you think about it. His view of the world around us is close to an alien. An ingenious, aesthetically exceptionally gifted, alien. I think that Wes will take cinema where nowhere else has gone before one day, if he hasn't done it already. 

His prose is totally unbelievable. He has deep, serious, thought-provoking matters in his film that are been thrown in that roulette of his and after some time, during the movie, you feel that your head spins from all that. All of those elements can be found again here in Asteroid City and in a way that it looks and smells fresh like it's his first movie. If the world around us was learning something from Wes' universe we would be living in a much better world, I can assure you about that. And I know that I get a bit grandioso when I speak about Wes' art, but for me is the most truthful artist that I know out there. And that is the epitome of success for me.     

Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell, 2006)

 When I first saw Shortbus at the theater when it came out, I thought that it was an interesting movie, but with flaws. When I watched it again after many years, I realized that those flaws were part... of the whole game that the film plays. Shortbus in reality is a fearless, provoking movie that is not happy with simply touching things, but is interested in getting to the actual core. Famous and notorious for its sex scenes this movie actually gets inside the human being. And by that I mean that is not happy with simply showing things, but it considers to make you feel things, to make you sense things. John Cameron Mitchell has also done Rabbit Hole an exceptionally gritty drama, a drama that takes its theme as far as it goes, but here is making a movie that you could easily call "erotic comedy-drama", but that characterization would be totally unsuccessful. Because Shortbus is clearly a dive inside the human's emotional universe. It's a snapshot of the things that humans do and suffer from.

 I would certainly call it one of the most interesting contemporary cult movies. And I think that it takes the "cult" seal because of the way it deals with the matters that it touches. Shortbus isn't and that's its biggest attribute in any way didactic. It doesn't try to sell morality to us, like so many American films try. Its world, its universe is that of the observer. It observes humans and their behaviors. And that of course is a thing that we all ask from art. We are not fucking interested to give us a moral code anymore. So many films try, eagerly, to give us something valuable to take home and they end up giving us waffling on superficial things that are presented as the huge truth of life. No, we don't fucking want that! We are interested in the method of communication. And when you are communicating something, you are not here to simply judge it, but you are here to state it. And that's what Shortbus is doing actually. It states things. It states things in a way that is so truthful, fragile and human, that you are left with nothing less that admiration for the movie.

It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)

 I have often thought that making into a thrilling movie the simplest of ideas, takes a lot of talent. It Follows is a movie that the story, the "thing" of the movie, stays in the title. And I assure there is nothing more in this movie other than its title, as far as the story is concerned. Now the fact that from there, meaning from having a film that has said everything through its title, till the film that you are watching, is like you have crossed mountains and lakes, goes to the creator of the movie, who has done splendid job indeed. It Follows is a hypnotic movie, a mystic movie. It's not about the actual scare in this movie, but mostly is to get you into a certain type of... threatening mood. The thing that follows people. And it follows and it follows and it won't rest till they are dead. Absolutely brilliant, minimalistic idea and an exquisite visualization of that, makes It Follows one of the most interesting horror films that you can find out there.

There are a few moments that I said to myself, while watching the movie, that this director knows cinema extremely well. He knows how to combine image, sound, music and create a unique atmosphere that is quite difficult to be put in plain words, because everything is so much alive in this movie. You can feel the houses, the streets, the cars, the pools. Everything has a character in there. And I think that is what makes a movie great, the fact that you forget that you are watching a movie and you are being swept into a filmic universe that has everything, from structure and laws till soul and heart. It Follows is definitely one of the B-side horror movies, because it doesn't try to shock you in any way. It tries to penetrate you and that is even more effective, than cheap shock. It tries to leave a mark on you. To make you take the movie with you, after you have left the theater. And the truth is that it succeeds in everything that it tries that film. 

Nine Deaths Of The Ninja (Emmett Alston, 1985)

 

I saw Nine Deaths Of The Ninja on a day that I was feeling particularly crappy. When I started the film I was expecting some ninja movie that would be undeniably bad. The thing that I got was really beyond words. Nine Deaths Of The Ninja is a straightforward satire of the genre and ninja movies. Yes it may feature a ninja story and action and swords and martial arts movements, but the film is  a farce without the slightest exaggeration. I still remember that opening titles scene where the 80s meet ninja mythology... Really, fuck me that was so funny! I watched the whole movie having a real blast of fun with it. The scene where Sho Kosugi trains by cutting watermelons with his sword and then when he stops a bullet with two fingers. All these moments made me realize that there are movies out there, really forgotten films, that are really something if you want to have a good, lighthearted time with them. And that opens a big conversation with the topic what is crap and what it isn't. Well crap doesn't necessarily means that it refers to a bad movie. There are tons of bad movies which are fucking masterpieces, out there.

Nine Death Of The Ninja is most certainly a bad movie, but at the same time is a movie that understands the fact that what it pictures is crappy. It's a very down-to-earth movie if you like. And that movie makes me wonder why people try sometimes so hard to make art? You know art with a capital A. Not that aren't real artists out there. There are a lot of great artists out there, but there are a lot of phony ones also. In the same way that no famous director ever tries porn, no famous director ever tried to make a ninja movie. The only example of mainstream film with ninjas was Ninja Assassin and that was an extremely interesting movie. I would very much like to see a ninja satire movie made by Adam McKay for example. I think that it would be a brilliant comedy. Till then though, I give you... Nine Deaths Of The Ninja.  

Timecode (Mike Figgis, 2000)

 Now this is a movie that I would definitely call experimental with the pure meaning of the word. Timecode is a movie that it takes place in four split screens and I can say with immense certainty that is one of the movies that drew my attention profoundly. I don't know if the actual story is that good, but I think that this is not the issue here. This environment that the movie builds, that universe, that atmosphere, are something to observe. And there is the sound that guides to which of the four screens to pay more attention. Brilliant idea I can say. Timecode is one of those deeply underappreciated movies that stay forgotten, doomed to a vile obscurity. With the banal shit that we are watching more and more, Timecode should be a film that would be on lists and talked about. But as I have said before the taste of critics and audience is by the fucking book. People like to see things that don't bother them at all. They don't care for the different, the odd, the weird, the eccentric. Well truth says that this is where art can be found. To the extraordinary. And not to the one that is similar to so many others.

Timecode is groundbreaking, fearless, ferocious and has a quality that speaks about a movie that has come to tell us something else. To tell is about the other side of the moon, the one that is not visible and clear to us. Maybe not the movie that you'll see when you want to enjoy yourself, but most certainly a movie that will give you tons of authentic cinematic allure. Figgis is a highly underrated director, mostly known for Leaving Las Vegas, hardly his best moment, who sees cinema as a canvas that you can paint whatever the fuck you like upon it. I take as my obligation to write about movies like Timecode, movies that have challenged the art of cinema by giving to the audience a totally knew taste of what can the media produce. Timecode is a film that I highly recommend, I know that some of you will hate me after you watch the movie, but I think that I will have done good to you that you watched it.    

The Frighteners (Peter Jackson, 1996)

I feel that the biggest attribute of The Frighteners lies on the fact that it's a movie that is as serious as it is ridiculous. You see whenever you are about to say that this movie is pure fun something happens and gets deep and vice versa. And I think that this is the epitome of comedy horror. Because that's what comedy horror means. A movie that stays a bit ambiguous. You don't know when to laugh and when to get scared. And thus The Frighteners tell a story that is a wonderful, brilliant mishmash of funny and scary moments. On the surface there is laughter, but underneath there is sadness, grief and terror. Peter Jackson might be the king of comedy horror, he has done it again back in 1992 with his terrific zombie splatter comedy Braindead. He knows the recipe for the good comedy horror, because he is a great bartender who mixes the correct doses of the ingredients so his movie become an inseparable cocktail of pure and untamable cinema art. 

The Frighteners is a movie that plays with you constantly. As a matter of fact I would put it, it fucks with you constantly. The one moment is making you happy and the other you feel that you are watching another film. That game, that brilliant, playful act that Peter has build make the journey something that you don't forget the time the film ends. Because The Frighteners is from the movies that you take with you when you go to sleep and you think loudly, "what the fuck did I see?" Jackson is a man of indisputable talent and while most people know him from The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, his career before them, shows that he is a filmmaker who is not afraid to really play with the audience. Because if there is one thing that the audience asks from the filmmaker is to really take them on a ride with a roller-coaster, from the ones that you find in amusement parks and they are called "the train of horror".